The Week in Review: June 10-14

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This week, Psychiatric Times® discussed a wide variety of psychiatric issues and industry updates, from an update on donanemab for Alzheimer disease to long-term response in antidepressants for major depressive disorder.

Lykos Therapeutics Releases Statement on FDA Advisory Committee Meeting

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On June 4, the US Food and Drug Administration Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee voted against the approval of MDMA-assisted therapy for the treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Lykos Therapeutics released a statement to provide additional insights on the outcome of this meeting.

“While we were of course disappointed by the outcome, we were not surprised by the important questions raised. We are advancing a novel treatment and have worked closely with the FDA over the course of years to address these complex issues. Ultimately, the final decision for the potential approval of midomafetamine rests with the FDA, and we are deeply committed to providing any information needed to enable its thorough review. We have full confidence in the rigor and thoughtfulness that the FDA will give our application,” said Amy Emerson, the CEO of Lykos Therapeutics. Continue Reading

Differences in Long-Term Response Among Antidepressants for MDD

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According to the results of a nationwide cohort study in Denmark, antidepressants differed in their efficacy for improving symptoms and preventing relapse of major depressive disorder (MDD) in patients over a 2-year period. Designed to emulate a randomized controlled trial (RCT), the investigators compared the long-term responses to 17 antidepressants within their respective pharmacologic classes.

Lars Vedel Kessing, MD, of the Copenhagen Affective Disorder Research Centre, Psychiatric Center Copenhagen, and colleagues pointed out that clinical trials of antidepressants are commonly conducted against placebo, with few comparing active agents and fewer extending beyond short-term assessment of acute effects. Continue Reading

Donanemab: FDA Advisors Unanimously Recommend for Approval

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A panel of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisors unanimously recommended Eli Lilly’s donanemab to treat Alzheimer disease, marking the next step towards potential full FDA approval later this year.

In an initial vote, 11 panel members unanimously said that the available donanemab data shows that it is effective at treating the early stages of Alzheimer disease. However, several panel members noted the need for more data in minoritized groups, such as Black and Hispanic patients. Furthermore, the panel agreed that donanemab’s benefits outweigh its risks. Continue Reading

History of Psychiatry: Its Relevance in Training and Beyond

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Formal instruction on the history of psychiatry is currently a mandatory component of psychiatric residency training in the United States. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires psychiatry residents achieve competence in their knowledge of the “history of psychiatry and its relationship to the evolution of medicine.” The importance of this area of study has been recognized since at least the 1960s. A 1967 survey found that 44 teaching centers in the US and 2 in Canada were offering instruction on historical psychiatry, twice as many as in 1961. Since then, there has been increasing recognition of the importance of history for the development of the future psychiatrist.

Here, we seek to highlight the relevance of the history of psychiatry not only in the training of residents but also in the day-to-day clinical work of the psychiatrist. One of us (QM) is a current psychiatry resident at Tufts Medical Center with interest in the history and philosophy of psychiatry, and the other (MR) is a psychodynamic psychotherapist who teaches history of psychiatry to residents at Tufts and the University of Central Florida. We have identified at least 5 reasons to study the history of the field. Continue Reading

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